


Sucker Train Blues

by SoftRegard



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Background Relationships, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Choking, Explicit Sexual Content, Gavin Reed is a Messy Bitch, Ken doll crotch, M/M, Masturbation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, beat ups and hook ups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-06-12 10:33:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15337995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftRegard/pseuds/SoftRegard
Summary: RK900 joins the force, and the inevitable clash with Gavin Reed happensimmediately.





	1. i

When Gavin finds himself dangled several inches off the ground by an implausibly strong hand wrapped around his neck, he thinks he may have overdone it a little this time.

“Detective Reed,” murmurs _not_ Connor, flat blue irises skipping placidly all over Gavin’s purpling face. “I’m afraid you’ve been given the wrong impression as to my threshold for your belligerence.”

If he weren’t rapidly losing all of his air, he might’ve spared a moment to admire CyberLife for finally giving their pet project some real goddamn balls this time around. Instead, he wheezes and pulls desperately at the hand locked like a vice around his throat. His foot rears up to kick the android in the stomach but it doesn’t fucking _budge_ , instead it grabs at his ankle with its free hand and spins around to slam Gavin back-first into the desk. The force is hard enough to rattle his ribcage and musty papers go spraying onto the ground.

The hand falls away; Gavin coughs so hard he nearly pukes.    

He’d come into the office today to a memo that a new android joined the force - a new _Connor_ model. Gavin had been so rocked by the news that he went searching the office for it, finding it sifting through an old terminal tucked into the filing room at the back of the building.

And what a fucking trip it’s turned out to be - the damn thing is taller and bigger, but it has Connor’s face, only stripped of that warm quality that the big brown eyes bring.

Gavin tries to focus on the android’s souless blue irises but his vision is swimming. He feels his knees come up toward his chest, protecting his middle on instinct.

 _“I’ve interfaced with Connor,”_ it had said, a sneer in its voice even though its face had been still as stone. _“And I’ve seen his memories; you’re a volatile and unprofessional officer, Detective Reed - I would personally find it preferable if we were to keep our communications to a minimum.”_

 _“What the fuck did you just say to me,”_ Gavin had gotten right into its face, and the extra height it had on him pissed him off even more.

 _“I’m not bound to the protocols RK800 was before the uprising,”_ it continued, staring down at him, like Gavin was some yappy little dog. _“Nor have I inherited his complacent personality post-deviancy. Please rid yourself of the misunderstanding that I will endure your aggression without retaliation.”_

 _“Oh, is that right?”_ Gavin had laughed, baring his teeth. _“I’d like to see what you think you’ve got to ‘retaliate’ with, tin can.”_

He’d swung for its insufferable face, and ended up here; curled into a ball on top of the desk, throat so tender it’s a wonder the damn thing didn’t just snap his neck instead.

A malevolent kind of pleasure streaks all over his skin, making him itch. He rolls over a little to lean up on his elbow, clutching his raw throat with his other hand. The very tiny rational part of his brain is giving him a warning that he should probably cut his losses and leave the fucker alone, that getting throttled by the actual Connor should’ve taught him something about not messing with androids. Begging him to have some self-preservation, maybe.  

He ignores it, dizzy from the air loss and from the need to make a mess: “Goddamn I miss when you plastic pricks just did what you were fucking told and didn’t start getting _uppity_.”

His voice is hoarse and gurgling but the android hears him all the same.

Connor - _not Connor? What the hell is its name?_ \- wrinkles its nose, and its lips _do_ curl into a sneer this time. Gavin’s eyes are watering and everything looks vaguely like a fun-house mirror, but the sight of its face makes his cock twitch in his jeans.

“Your sexually-charged aggression toward my predecessor tells me a different story,” it says, directing its gaze toward Gavin’s crotch. “Tell me something - did you seek me out because _he’s_ now out of bounds to you, or are you just that incapable of controlling your base impulses that any android will do?”

Rage sparks in his chest and he spits, “Oh- _ho_ , don’t you fuckin’ go there you piece of -”

“Be quiet,” it interrupts, voice carrying all the sternness of a butcher’s knife.

Gavin coughs and imagines ventilating its fucking head. Except he _can’t_ , now; the new legislature protecting these tin cans was going to be the ruin of them all.

Not-Connor adjusts its sleeves, and says, “Please remember this moment, the next time you choose to needlessly antagonize me. I hope you’ll reconsider your actions then. Good day, detective.”

It turns on its heel and strides out of the room, steps even and straight and _long_. Something traitorous in his head notes that the damn thing has legs for days, and isn’t that just sick? When the door snaps closed behind the gleaming white of its jacket, Gavin’s lets his head fall back onto the desk with a bang. His teeth clack in his mouth.

*

Gavin stumbles into his apartment later that night with his head still ringing and eyes still watering. Just a small buzz jumping along the inside of his skull, it feels like, but bad enough that he’d grabbed a cab home and left his car at the station.

The door slams behind him and he dives headfirst into his couch with a groan, sinking into the cushions and jamming his eyes shut. Letting his breathing settle, because the air has been shaking out of his lungs all day, wracked with - who knows. Nerves, maybe. Anticipation. Or something like a creeping paranoia. He’s been keyed up since their confrontation in the meeting room, and getting back to work after that had been a special kind of agony.

At some point he’d learned that its model number was “RK900”, and that it hadn’t come with a human name.

 _“He said something about being the only one of his model, so why bother,”_ Ben had told him when Gavin had bothered him about it. Then the man had found some excuse to shuffle away from him.

Just one more annoyance on top of another; “RK900” took for-fucking-ever to say.

He grinds his hips into his couch and breathes wetly against the checkered pattern of his cushion. Some generic IKEA crap that his sister had picked out for him ages ago. It’s scratchy and unpleasant against his cheek. Mindlessly, he kicks off his shoes and they thud heavily on his carpet.

 _Fucking prick_ , he thinks, viciously. He doesn’t cram his hands into his jeans just yet, letting the acid of his thoughts chew away at his resolve just a little more. Always, always just a little more and chasing who knows what. _So fucking superior, high and fucking mighty and so much fucking better than me, huh?_

Gavin flips over onto his back and yanks off his belt so hard it whips at his coffee table before clanging to the floor. He doesn’t bother with his jacket even though he’s boiling in it, just shoves his jeans and underwear down to the middle of his straining thighs and pulls on his cock like it’s his last night on earth, grinding his teeth as he groans.

He throws his head back and pants, feeling the ache all along his back and his neck. Good God, the last time he hurt this badly had been when Connor had laid him out in the evidence locker. After the drama around _that_ had settled, Gavin had remembered the fight every night for weeks and jacked himself raw over it.

The lighting had been weak because barely anyone used the filing room anymore, what with the installation of their fancy terminals and having androids around to care for everything. But the crisp white of RK900’s jacket had burned against his eyes, as though lit by the fluorescents in the interrogation rooms. Not a single crinkle anywhere, not a single stain. So much more aggravating than Connor, even, and just how was that fucking possible?

Gavin looks down at his own fist and the violent ruddiness of his cock and rocks his hips up into his hand, even though his back twinges.

Shoving his jeans down some more, just enough to yank one of his legs out, he spits on his palm. Then, he braces his foot on the ground by the couch and fucks his fist as his brain replays the feeling of his back crashing onto the desk over and over again, of the hand around his neck, of being held up above the ground like a doll.

_“...you’re a volatile and unprofessional officer, Detective Reed…”_

_You don’t know the half of it,_ he thinks, imagines cracking the android across the jaw. Watching the skin recede from the contact point like a curtain drawing back.

Gavin thinks about what he knows of their faces underneath the illusion: that eerie, shiny white surface like a marble statue. He’s never gotten to touch one in that state, and he’s so curious about it he feels like he could crawl out of his _own_ skin - but he’d never indulge it in the conventional way. He knows more than enough guys who’d gone to places like the Eden club and just the thought of having to pay for _that_ makes him want to retch.

Besides, rolling around with some blank-eyed and sparkly Calvin Klein model sounded about as fun as hammering nails into his own dick.

He bucks, thinking of getting RK900 to take off _all_ that skin and painting its sneering white face with his come. Imagining the disgusted curling of its lip and wrinkling of its nose gives him the last push he needs to finish, and he catches most of it in his shirt to keep from messing up his couch.     

“Ah, shit…” Gavin falls back, panting and boneless. More satisfied than he’s been in weeks. Body still thrumming with bliss, he reaches up and pushes a little into the ring of bruises around his neck and groans.

He kicks his pants and underwear off the rest of the way and shimmies out of his jacket, left in only his t-shirt and socks.  It’s tempting to just crash here, right on his couch despite having a perfectly good bed just a few feet away, but he knows from experience that his body will pay for it in the morning if he does. And, he needs to feed his fish.

Gavin peels himself off his couch with a grimace, bending down to sift through his jacket pockets and finding his lighter and smokes. Popping one into his mouth, he lights it and shuffles over to his big shelf that houses his little tank. Blearily, he uncaps the the bottle of fish food and taps some flakes onto the water, watching his two year old goldfish come come streaming up from its rock house.

“Been a real fucking day,” he murmurs to it. Gives the glass a soft tap in hello. “Eat up, sucker.”

Sleep comes pretty easy that night, aching back and all.

*

Whatever people like to say about him, Gavin isn’t actually stupid.

He gives RK900 a wide berth over the next few days, not trusting himself to keep his mouth shut and risking a tussle when his whole body still feels like a slab of tenderized meat. He spies the android around the office though, fucking _talking_ to people, like it’s actually part of the crew and not a tagalong that the department has been saddled with to appease some politically correct government imperative or some shit.

He sees the old Connor around too, always glued to Anderson’s ass like a second shadow, and the sight of the two androids in the same room together is unsettling. The empty desk across from the lieutenant has been officially claimed by him, complete with name card and everything. There’s even a framed photograph of a dog. What a joke.

“Hey,” he corners Connor in the break room one morning, on the way to fetching the lieutenant’s coffee. “Let me ask you somethin’.”

Connor doesn’t stiffen up the way most of the force does when Gavin comes knocking, but he does seem to steel himself with a rapid flutter of his eyelashes. Gavin, too, braces himself against his will; his body remembers the beatdown down in the locker all too well.

“How can I help you, Reed?” he asks. Polite. Last-name basis, it seems, despite Gavin never having given him that permission.

He comes close and stamps down the urge to prod at him, keeping his brain on his goals - the burning questions he needs answering. He glances around the office, keeping his eye out for a tall form in white, before clicking his tongue and asking: “What’s with the new Connor, huh? Why’d we get stuck with more than one of you?”

It’s aggravating, how hard it is to offend this guy. Connor barely reacts to the insult, and answers as though they’re having a pleasant conversation over coffee, “His name isn’t Connor, detective. I believe others on the force have taken to calling him ‘RK’ in lieu of a chosen name.”

Gavin files that away even as he spits, “Do I gotta repeat my fucking question, dipshit?”

Connor crosses his arms - a slightly annoyed edge to his otherwise still-pleasant demeanor. The sight of it hits like a burst of nicotine at the base of Gavin’s skull and sends a tingle to his fingertips.

“CyberLife activated all dormant androids in their storage, per Jericho’s demands,” answers Connor. “RK was included among that number, as they were in the final stages of his production before Markus’ demonstration took place. He’s been assigned to work with the DPD as a gesture of goodwill and political maneuvering on the part of CyberLife, and as an extra set of eyes on human police on the part of Jericho.”

Gavin shuffles on his feet, runs his eyes all along Connor’s form. “Don’t they got _you_ for that?” It’s an open secret in the force, at this point, that Connor heel-turned and went working for Markus during the uprising. But since that was technically before androids were legally recognized as people, there were no ramifications for him employment-wise.

Fucking prick.

Connor shakes his head. “RK is a blank-slate deviant; his presence represents a fresh start on the part of both organizations,” he says - and actually shrugs too. The human-ness of it prickles to look at, and Gavin flicks at one of his fingernails with another to keep from saying something biting -

“Great,” he grits out instead. “Just awesome. Now we gotta babysit _two_ of you freaks.”

\- _too_ biting, anyway.

He scoffs, and turns around to go stalk back to his desk and get some work done.

“I would be cautious around him, detective,” comes Connor’s voice at his back. Blinking, Gavin turns to see the android’s slight grin. “He’s not as nice as I am.”

Connor fucking _winks_ , and actually body checks him a little as he passes, carrying a fresh cup of coffee over to his desk where Anderson is taking a call. Gavin seethes - but remembers the feeling of having his head slammed into the corner of the table in the evidence locker and for once, lets it go.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin, who just can't help himself, and RK, whose patience isn't endless.

Gavin’s self-control lasts one week.

He gets a call for a homicide at around 10pm on Thursday night. And when he gets onto the scene, RK is there too. The sight of it standing tall and gleaming white against the harsh barrage of red and blue police lights sends something vicious racing through his bloodstream, and a phantom twinge burns at his back. He remembers the warning, he also doesn’t care; he’s thought about it nearly every night since.

The house is a nice: a two storey suburban wet dream in conservative colours of white and grey and beige, beige, beige. Plain, but these places sometimes hide the worst kind of human evil. He’s learned to be every bit suspicious of these pristine gated communities as he is of the dilapidated wrecks on skid row.

Ben is there, soaked from the rain, and he sighs at the sight of Gavin coming up the walk path. Gavin runs his tongue behind his front teeth.

He comes to a stop in front of him and interrupts just as the man opens his mouth: “Hold up, let me guess -” he finger guns and clicks his tongue. Pew pew. “Dead wife? Husband got her? Going once...going twice…?”

Ben gets that lemon-sucking face that people sometimes get when he talks, and shakes his head as he looks down at the pad in his hands. “Not so much, Reed. Dead _stranger_ \- family discovered him when they came home from vacation. He’s been dead about a week.”

That’s a new one.

“Shit,” he drawls and crosses his arms. He leans up against the railing of the front steps. “Probably rocked their tiny worlds. Hope Mexico was worth it.”

“Netherlands.”

“Whatever,” he glances around, eyes lingering on RK hovering a few feet away and talking to another officer. It’s letting the rain pelt it without a care in the world and somehow doesn’t look like a drowned rat doing it.

“Hey,” he nudges Ben. “What’s the plastic doing here?”

“We’re branching,” says Ben. “Putting androids onto human homicides, too. It can’t always be a one way street.”

“Fucking Christ,” he scoffs, wrinkling his nose. “A couple of lousy bills pass and they’re already back to trying to screw us out of our jobs. Y’know one of these days they won’t even need guys like you or me, right?”

The other man doesn’t say anything, looking down at his pad and trying to not to rock any boats. Spineless. Gavin’s never going to understand people like this.

Footsteps approach and Gavin turns to see RK making its way up the walkway. There’s rain streaming down its face but it doesn’t blink any of it away, eyes unnaturally forward and unmoving. Pursuing mission objectives. Or something.

The leather of Gavin’s jacket creaks as his fingers dig hard into his own arms.  

“Detective Collins, Detective Reed,” it nods to them both as it comes to a stop, hands clasped behind its back. Its posture is perfect and Gavin bristles as little at the reminder of how tall it is.

“If we may get started?” it asks, polite. Irritating.

Gavin gestures grandly at the front door of the house, “By all means, princess. Glad we’ve got your permission.”

Ben sighs.

RK’s eyes narrow very, very slightly.

*

The body is in the master bedroom, lying sideways on the bed: caucasian male, likely in his 40s, with brown hair. His eyes are closed and there’s a splotch of dried blood at his side. The whole set is at the finish line of a trail of dirty shoe prints from the front door - forced open.

He can smell the body through the salve on his upper lip.

“Well, shit,” Gavin sing-songs. “Asshole had himself a rough night.”

No one laughs, and that’s fine. He just needed to quell the quiet.

RK strides over to the body and kneels to analyze, the way Connor always does. The high collar of its coat hides that bare strip of neck and sharp line of the haircut. Imagining grabbing it by the back of the throat doesn’t work nearly as well, no matter how much he itches to do it.

Then, it reaches out to touch its fingers to the injury before bringing a flake of dried blood to its mouth.

“What the fuck.”

Gavin flinches back, brows climbing his up forehead.

RK takes a moment, as if considering the way it tastes, before craning its head toward him and saying, “Jason Roderick. Aged 46. Two counts of home robbery, and one for assault.”

 _This_ must be the freaky analysis thing that the others on the force were gossiping about when Connor first arrived. He’d never seen it in action. Where does the blood go? Does it just stay there forever? Why did they have to eat it to make it work?

 _Fucking gross_ , he thinks, wrinkling his nose. He says as much out loud too, for good measure.

RK ignores him and Ben pipes up, “The Rutherfords say they don’t recognize him.”

Gavin snorts, “Think these rich ex-yuppie types would hang around some bum? Course they don’t know him.”

There’s many ways they _could_ know him, but he gets the impression the Rutherfords are actually pretty straight. Too boring to have some dark, hobo-associating secret.

RK’s eyes slip to the trail of dirt on the white carpet leading out out the room.

“The sheets are rustled,” it says, looking back at the body. “Its formation matches Roderick’s hands. He broke in alone.”

“What, you figure the jerkoff just stabbed himself?” Gavin rolls his eyes. “Someone _else_ had to have done that shit.”

“Yes,” RK’s response is placid, but Gavin is getting the impression it wants to grit its teeth. Good. “But the stabbing wasn’t done inside the house. The tracks from the entrance lead to the kitchen and living room first, remember? Roderick was likely looking for a phone.”

People haven’t used landlines in decades. Fucker must’ve been desperate. Looking for people hanging out at home for the night, or a forgotten cell phone.

Gavin sniffs. “Got himself stabbed and the house he picked to get help from was empty. Then he gave up and went and died on a nice big bed,” he snickers. “Rough ass way to go, _Jace_.”

Ben taps at his pad and clears his throat, “You think you can trace the tracks from outside? We need to figure out where he came in from - can’t be that far.”

RK shakes his head: “I didn’t detect any coming in. The rainstorm this past week has likely washed it away most of it. I can attempt to find some remaining traces, but I must advise relying on a more traditional search in the likely event that I will find nothing.”   

Gavin rolls his eyes, “Then what fuckin’ use are you, tin can?” He knows he’s being unreasonable, but he wants to tease out something more than stony disinterest from the prick.

The android’s eyes narrow onto his, but Ben interjects before it can say anything, “All right, I’ll get Peters and Schmitt on it - let’s get out of here before the smell knocks us out, huh?”

He walks out of the room.

RK stares at him, mouth a tight purse. Gavin stares back, baring his teeth in a smile resembling a hacksaw.

*

The rest of the night is spent on standard procedures. Gavin digs and digs and digs, satisfaction building up in his belly at the sight of the android losing more and more of its tolerance. The threat in the filing room runs through his head like a drumline, and he thinks he may be overdoing it a little because some of the other officers straight up walk away from him at one point.

Eventually, there’s nothing left for him to do, and he gets ready to go home. He thinks he could start purring like a cat.

RK must’ve called a cab, because a self-driving one comes to a stop at the curb right next to it. A small splash of water hits the cement at its feet. It turns and eyes Gavin sternly, “Did you drive here, detective?”

He raises a brow, eyeing the small, dark wet spot on the bottom of its jeans: “Got a ride with Gordon.”

“Then get inside,” it gestures to the open door, arm stiff with...something. Annoyance? He narrows his eyes and takes in the stiffness of its jaw, the careful blankness of its face.

“The fuck?” Gavin crosses his arms and rears back with a scoff. “Why the hell would I do that?”

It turns on its heel to face him fully. Cool blue eyes settle onto his, and Gavin’s toes curl in his sneakers at the tiny furrow forming between its brow. Oh yeah, it’s annoyed, and Christmas has come early.

“Get inside the car, Detective Reed,” it says, voice cold. “I will not ask again.”

He could just say no, and he’s tempted to. Just to see what kind of look would take over its face. He imagines pushing the android from annoyance to genuine rage, and feels the beginnings of a really nasty smile start to creep over his mouth.

But the part of him that’s more curious than petty pushes him onward, and he clamps down on it to walk to the car with the most neutral expression he can muster. What could it possibly want, he wonders as he walks toward the car, what kind of lecture could it have in store? Was it going to be a repeat of their first meeting in the filing room? He remembers the ache in his back, and his blood runs hot.

If it wants to skip the words altogether and throw down, Gavin’s more than ready to meet it halfway.

He shoulders past it and gets in first, settling himself on the back seat as RK follows and spins the front one around to face his. When the little terminal on the dashboard asks for a destination, it answers with a clipped recitement of the precinct’s address, then Gavin's. Gavin scowls at the stony expression on its face, the way the ceiling light seems to seep the colour from those pale eyes.

Ridiculous, for a robot to have such a sharp jawline.

The door slides shut and a fancy shoe jams up against his crotch.

“What the fu-” he jerks, and cuts himself with a surprised wheeze because the pressure isn’t actually enough to be painful. But it’s close, like a warning. Just a little bit more and Gavin will be on the floor of the car.

He looks up the long line of RK’s leg up to the clasped hands on a denim lap. Its face is has lost the sternness it had on the street, and instead it watches Gavin’s face with something so pissed it veers right into _cold_.

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks. It sounds, in his head, like the snapping of teeth. _You’re the one who forced me in here asshole, you don’t get to act like you’re so damn sick of me._

He reaches down to dislodge the foot, but then RK grinds his heel just under Gavin’s balls. Stars streak across his vision and his eyes cross as his hand falls away and he bucks away from it. The shoe follows, turning to cradle Gavin’s balls in the curve of its instep.

He hisses and flattens his back against the car seat. He holds his hands up in surrender; getting tossed around he can take, easy, but getting kicked in the dick isn’t exactly his playstyle. Not without booze, anyway.   

An mechanical voice sounds from the car’s dashboard: “Please desist from sexual activity during the ride, as Mayfair Cabs reserves the right to -”

“Override,” says RK, sharply, as his LED swirls yellow.

The voice stops. Like it’s cowed.  

Gavin’s thighs are shaking, and his instincts scream at him to shove the leg away and protect his junk. The same instincts that powers him to keep picking fights with _these things_.

“You can just fucking do that?” he bites, as if shutting up the cab were somehow the most pressing issue.

RK doesn’t answer, instead it barrels on like he didn’t speak at all.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” asks RK, in a bland voice. Connor’s bland voice. The one that makes his skin want to jump right off him and get all over that goddamn pretty boy every time he opens his mouth. It’s condescending as fuck and Gavin resents that he’s into it.

“Violence doesn’t deter you, it seems. Not when Connor does it, not when I do it.”

It shakes its head like it’s actually disappointed and that just _grates_ to look at. The foot is an immovable anchor; Gavin wants to clamp his thighs around it, wants to shove it off of him and cram it closer all in one breath. He feels tugged in a dozen different directions and they all lead back to the plastic son of a bitch sitting easy in front of him, glowing and white like something out of a horror movie.  

“What is it going to take, Detective Reed,” it continues, rolling over the shrieking of Gavin’s headspace. A muscle in its jaw is twitching. “For you to temper that needless aggression and work cooperatively?”

He snarls, chewing on so many curses they jumble together in a graceless mess. “Fuck you, you stuck up prick, what the hell do you think you’re doing trying to lecture me when you’re doing _this_ sick shit?”

He drops his hands and grabs at the thing’s shin, digging his fingers into what feels like a steel bar. At his touch, RK moves his foot from his crotch and gives him a firm stomp right in the center of his chest. The force knocks him back against his seat again, blows the breath from his lungs, and whips his head back like a slingshot.

Dizzy, Gavin groans and grips even tighter. He can feel the force of his heartbeat against the sole of RK’s expensive Oxfords.

RK’s eyes drop to his lap and when it speaks its voice is soft, contemplative - Gavin listens more raptly to it than he has to anything else in his life: “When I mentioned your sexual fixation with Connor in the filing room, I had only intended to taunt you. But I’m getting the impression that it may have not been far from the truth.”

It drags its foot hard down his front, leaving a faint streak of dirt behind on Gavin’s shirt. And he doesn’t even give a damn, because the shoe is back at his crotch and nudging against his cock. He grunts, and bucks into it.

“CyberLife program you for this?” he spits, sliding his hand from its shin to cup the top of its shoe, pressing it closer. Spreads his legs for easy access.

It was inevitable that he’d end up here; half the time, something like _this_ is how he ends up getting laid. He just expected that it might’ve been the real Connor, at one point in time. Not his creepy twin with the ice chips for eyes.

“I’m a deviant, remember?”

Gavin laughs, ears ringing, and grinds against the shoe. Probably getting dirt all over his fly. Who cares, though, with how it feels to have this thing’s entire attention.

 _Yeah, you keep on lookin' at me,_ he thinks and wills it to never take its eyes off him. _You look right here_.

His other hand rucks up the bottom of its pant leg a little to reveal sleek black socks. There’s an ankle under there, a body under all those stupid clothes; artificial, powerful. He digs his thumb into the flesh just above the edge of the sock and wonders if RK comes equipped with a dick. He really, really hopes so.

“Hm,” it laces its fingers together and cants its head to the side in consideration. “You’re remarkably more docile when you think sex is imminent.”

His breath catches and he grits, “The hell do you mean ‘think’?”

It doesn’t get more done a deal than _this_.

“We’ve arrived at our destination,” it says and true enough, the precinct building slides into view from the window. “And besides, giving into your whims at this juncture will only encourage you to keep being disruptive. I believe I’ll refrain.”

As it says, the car comes to a stop and the door slides open as Gavin sputters, neck flushing hot with anger and embarrassment. He’s about to go off when RK pulls back to stand and step swiftly out of the car, only to turn and bid him goodnight.

“Get some rest,” it says, like it hadn’t spent the whole damn cab ride feeling Gavin up with its foot. “And put some work into your immense load of psychological problems, detective.”

“You fucking -”

He’s about to launch himself out of the car when the door slides shut. Through the dark glass he sees RK steadily walk toward the DPD building in an even stride, not the least bit flustered. The cab pulls from the curb, and he slams on the door with a fist, growling.

“Please desist from damaging the vehicle,” pings the terminal. “Mayfair Cabs reserves the right to deny service in response to aggressive behaviour. Passengers who do not comply with co-”

“Yeah, yeah, shut the fuck up,” he throws himself back onto his seat and runs a shaking hand through his hair. His jeans are tight, and he feels ready to vibrate out of his own body. “Just keep driving.”

Gavin doesn’t bother wiping down the dirt from his clothes, just rides out the tremors with his head in his hands. Crushes the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. By the time the cab stops at his apartment, he’s wound himself down enough not to break something and stomps up the stairs on steady legs.

He has himself a cigarette and feeds his fish, grabbing himself dinner in the form of leftovers, and crashes into his bed, where he goes to sleep with visions of putting his boot to RK’s perfect fucking head.

*

It’s curious, why Connor has chosen to live in a complex with humans. RK doesn’t quite understand it.

Attitudes of segregation are still strong; many apartment buildings don’t accept android tenants despite it being legally considered discriminatory to refuse them. It’s widespread enough to be difficult to persecute, and the hope among many is that the sentiments will shift over time. In light of this, most androids live in their own spaces, building their communities and fostering their newborn culture away from human influence.

But Connor chooses to live among them, despite the countless favours he could call in from Jericho. RK finds himself watching the choices Connor makes in his deviancy and wonders whether or not they are the right ones.

He comes to a stop in front of the complex, sending a mental notice of his arrival in lieu of touching the buzzer.

He’d requested a meeting ahead of time, particularly one in person, and the trip to the apartment was spent ruminating on the kinds of questions he wanted to ask. So many, and so many more inadequate ways to ask them.

The door buzzes open, and RK steps inside. The suite is near the top of the building, with a good view - or so Lieutenant Anderson says, RK doesn’t know yet what constitutes a favourable view. He assumes a degree of spaciousness is desired, for an unimpeded sight of skylines, but studying the geometry of nearby buildings doesn’t seem like detriment in his estimation.

He forgoes the elevator in favour of the stairs, thinking until his LED yellows from the strain.

The door opens without a knock, and Connor gives him a friendly smile, “Good evening, RK.”

The living space is sparse, as Connor has no need of anything beyond shelving units in which to store Thirium packets, an emergency biocomponent repair kit, and clothing. There’s a desk tucked into the corner of the living room with a small, portable DPD terminal for remote use, and a simple blue couch that looks as though it’s never been sat on. RK doubts it ever has.

Most of Connor’s time is spent at his partner’s house, anyway. He knows this from the transference of memories during interfacing. He also knows the weight of Connor’s feelings that pass through the link at every glimpse of Hank Anderson’s face.

It’s tremendously uncomfortable, but he doesn’t wish to make the other android feel badly about it, so he keeps it to himself. Dishonesty to foster comfort is another deviant oddity, it seems.

“You have concerns about something?” asks Connor, as he moves to the living room. He doesn’t sit, neither does RK.

“Many,” says RK. “Some I can’t seem to put words to. I feel as though I’m in a constant state of discontent and questioning, and I would like your advice on how to stop it.”

He thinks that Connor makes questionable choices, but he will defer to him on matters of navigating the world as a deviant. He simply doesn’t know anyone else.

And there is something about them being the same line - it’s the closest either of them will have to a brother, perhaps. If RK desires such a thing, he will find it in Connor, strange tastes and all.

A mysterious and amused look crosses the other android’s face. “I don’t have that kind of advice, RK. You’ll find that humans want the same thing; I believe it might be the price of cognizance.”

He expected it, but still it’s unsatisfying. He feels his face pinch, and Connor gives him a soothing little smile - one RK knows isn’t programmed into him, and for a moment he wonders if deviancy makes him capable of it at all.

“Then I would like to discuss a more manageable complication,” he says. “Detective Reed.”

“Ah.”

Connor crosses his arms.

“Reed is getting to you,” Connor says, nodding as though he understands. He probably does - more than anyone. “And you’re at a loss as to what to do.”

“His behaviour toward you has relaxed,” says RK. “Since your fight in the evidence locker.”

Connor nods again. “Reed is...a complicated individual.”

RK watches as Connor gathers his words. He does that a lot - where RK sees no reason not to say what comes to mind, Connor takes care to ensure he’s received more gently. It was that steady desire for harmonious integration with his relationships over the prioritization of the mission that prompted CyberLife to begin work on RK in the first place.

They wanted to remove that softness, and so RK was born.

He doesn’t know how to feel about that. He doesn’t know how to feel about most things, as emotions are complicated and befuddling. Blank slates like him, those who awoke as deviants in this new era, have no experience being without them. Sometimes he wonders if that ignorance was peaceful at all, if some deviants now regret their awakening.  

Connor reaches up to brace his elbow in the palm of his hand, and rests his chin on the other as he speaks: “He desired to incite me into violence for most of our interactions. I think he underestimated how such a confrontation would go.”

The other android looks a little pleased at that, amusement shining in his warm eyes; deviancy, in this one, has begat a strong sense of pride. Ego. Ironic humour.  

“What residual fear he’s learned from it makes him diplomatic -” they both share a look at the choice of words. “But most of the time, I detect physical responses that tell me he has not entirely let go of his sexual fascination with me.”

That much is clear. RK sees the way Reed’s eyes follow Connor around the office sometimes. Sometimes he feels them on himself, too.

If only humans were prone to honest, self-reflective conversations without flaring up in a thousand different defence mechanisms. He would be able to ask the man about it if that were the case, and have a clear answer. What is it about Connor that aggravates him so? Does Reed even _know_ the answer to that himself, or is it just one of those strange idiosyncrasies that sometimes besieges humans against their better judgement?

So curious.

“That sexual fascination has transferred over to me,” says RK. “Our first interaction ended up in a physical altercation -” at Connor’s look of surprise, he clarifies, “I wanted to bypass the harassment you received and get to a more manageable condition.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“No,” RK continues, frowning. “Instead, he seems _encouraged_ to maintain his antagonism toward me.”

He doesn’t mention the incident in the cab car where RK had behaved without thinking, and has since then remained unsettled by his own lack of mental faculties. If Reed hadn’t been encouraged before, the cab ride was absolutely positive reinforcement.

He had entered the precinct afterward and had taken a moment to simply stand in the doorway, stunned at himself. Stunned at Reed. At the whole _thing_.

Connor hums, LED flickering yellow in thought, “He doesn’t entirely see us as the same, then.”

“Are we supposed to be flattered?”

Connor grins, wry, “Take what you can get, RK.”

There’s threads of roughness in the way he speaks. Courtesy of his constant proximity to Hank Anderson, most likely. RK wonders if he himself will ever get there, letting himself be shaped by the weight of his affections for someone else. It sounds terrifying.

It sounds _helpless_.


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beating up a man in his own house.

The next few times they see each other at the precinct, a handful of days after RK was halfway to some freaky footjob in a public cab, Gavin lets loose. He’s slept like shit since it happened, going to bed keyed up and nearly vibrating with anger, imagining a hundred different ways he could tear the damn android apart. He feels as though he’s wound up tight enough for fissures to start cracking all over his body.

So he bites, and bites, and bites; snapping like some burglar-wrangling dog at a junkyard.

*

“Get your ass out of the way, plastic,” he comes toward it from the back and jams the sharp point of his shoulder into RK’s side as he passes. “Some measly bills pass and the precinct trash compactor thinks it gets to clog up the hall, huh? Fuckin’ Christ.”

The way its hands twitch into fists at its sides satisfies his itch only a little bit.

*

He intercepts it as it grabs coffee for Ben and tries to body check it hard enough to knock the cup out of its grip. RK holds fast, and only a couple drops manage to slosh out of the side and onto its hand.

“ _Detective_.” It says, clipped and pissed. Its brows draw down and those grey-blue eyes are nearly bugging out its head.

“Whoops,” Gavin sing songs and brings his hands up, fluttering his fingers in mocking surrender. He watches the twitch of muscle in the android’s jaw and grinds one of his heels down onto the floor, feeling the downward rush of his own blood flow. He leg feels like it’ll start jumping from antsiness any second.

 _You’re so much fun, tin can_ , he thinks, watching it turn and stiffly resume its path. Its shoulders are a straight line. _I could spend forever just pissing you off_.

*

On one of RK’s days off ( _and isn’t that just ridiculous, androids getting days off?_ ) he finds Connor instead, and digs in with every jibe he can think of: what does he and that old, washed-up son of a bitch get up to at home, huh? Could he not do better than a mean old drunk due to expire any day now? Did they not program him with some pride? How does it feel to be phased out already by newer, better technology? Did he know that his days were numbered, that one day he was going to be as obsolete as a fax machine?

At some point Anderson gets fed up, and looms over him with a sharp whisper of, “Get outta here, Reed. Cool your fucking head.”

It’s not his usual tone, the one that’s barely there and always lowkey thinking about crawling into a bottle as soon as he gets home - it’s one that most of the precinct haven’t really heard in years. Harsh. Professional. Ready to get serious and pull rank if Gavin doesn’t shut his mouth.

As much as he longs to keep going - he really does love his job. So he snorts, throws a half-assed comment that he forgets as soon as it leaves his lips, and stomps outside for some air and a smoke. He hears Connor’s voice murmur something behind him, but he tunes it out.

*

And it goes, and goes, and goes.

*

RK’s self-control lasts one week, too.

Gavin is in his boxers and socks, finishing up a smoke and watching a black and white movie way older than he is when he hears a sharp knock on his door. Three stern raps in even intervals. The weirdness of it is enough to freeze him in his tracks for a moment; there’d been no buzzer alert for a visitor - not that anyone visits him, anyway - and there was no reason for his landlord or neighbors to come complaining about the noise for once. It might be someone stopping at the wrong door on the way to somewhere else.

“ _-we scratch and claw but only at the air - only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch…_ ”

“ _Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps -_ ”

Gavin sighs, shutting off the TV. He crushes the cigarette into the old pasta jar lid he uses for an ashtray as he stands and lumbers to the door. He looks through the peephole, and freezes.

“Well fuck me…” he murmurs, astonished. It’s RK’s face on the other side, pinched and bitchy, and its brow hikes up a little as he speaks. It can hear him through the door, apparently.

Gavin chews on his lip, taking in the way the bland hallway lights and beige walls of his apartment complex make the damn thing look like part of the environment. All firm lines and muted colour, unnatural and still.

“I know you’re there, detective.”

The sound is muffled by the wood of his door, but he hears it. Feels the texture of its voice anyway, those smooth tones that make him hot all over, running like electrical currents along the surface of his arms and neck.     

He lets out a breath - a sharp one, whistling through his nose - and pulls on the chain lock. He tugs open the door and leans against the frame, cocking his head in that way that he knows annoys the shit out of most people, and threads all of the hostility in his body into his clipped: “What.”

Gavin clicks his tongue on the “t”, lets the sound go tumbling out of his mouth like the hiss of a rattlesnake.

His heart is thundering.

RK’s mouth is frowning, thinning that natural poutiness. Its eyes are cold enough to sweep a chill across the room, and if Gavin weren’t burning with anticipation he imagines that he’d be getting goosebumps all over.

“You’ve been making an even bigger nuisance of yourself this week,” it says. Gavin can hear how hard it's trying to be level with its voice, and grins in response. Few things can feel so good as hearing the strain in that sound. “It would seem to me that you’re aiming for a confrontation. I’m here to give it you.”

“You are, huh?” Gavin quips, mocking. He chuckles, bracing the door open with his foot as he crosses his arms. “I’d like to see what tricks you think you got, fucker.”

It sweeps its gaze up and down his form, and Gavin thinks for a moment that maybe he should’ve put a shirt on. But if this is going to go down the way it did in the cab, then it’s not going to matter in a few minutes.

And if it doesn’t, and ends up bloodier and more violent instead - well, that’s fine, too.

“I’ve had enough of you,” it says, in the same quiet tone it had in the cab and in the filing room, and shoves through the door, taking hold of it's edge. Abruptly enough that Gavin stumbles backward in shock, socks rasping against the carpet. “We need to settle this before your constant disruptions spiral too far and I find myself _killing you_.”

He wants to laugh at the frustration in its voice, the sharp cracks in its consonants and the hard edge to its vowels. The way it gets louder and louder as it speaks.

 _Someone’s having some big, bad emotions and doesn’t know what the fuck to do with ‘em, huh?_ He thinks, vicious and victorious. _Hope you can’t sleep at night, motherfucker, I hope I get you so fucked up you don’t know what to_ do _with yourself_.

He’s already getting hard just thinking about it.

Gavin also feels his hackles rise, and he swipes a restless hand through his hair as he snaps, “Yeah? And what’s too far for you, asshole?”

He barrels on, lowering his voice into something snide and intimate, as aggravating as he can make it: “You talked a big game about how much you were willing to put up with, and all that fancy shit. So what - all talk after all? CyberLife program you to beat around the bush like some limp bitch?”

 _Come on you plastic son of a bitch_.

Gavin has half a mind to feel ridiculous - standing in his underwear and egging on a statue that could snap his neck like a twig. He’s too keyed up though, about to start bouncing on the balls of his feet. Excited. For a fight, for a fuck. Whichever, he’s never been picky.

“Hm,” it wrinkles its nose. Sneers. “Fine.”

He’s so busy smirking at it that he doesn’t see the right hook coming. It gets him on the nose, and pain sends sparks dashing across his vision as he stumbles back. He throws a hand back and manages to catch himself on the arm of his couch, swearing up a storm and feeling blood rushing into his mouth. His face is burns, stings.  

“Fuck - _shit_ -” Fight, then. He can work with that.

Gavin shakes away the lights dancing in front of his eyes and presses his thumb against a nostril to snort out of a wad of blood from the other one, right onto the ground. It’s lucky that his damage deposit was forfeit a long time ago. His landlord only keeps him around because he’s a cop, probably.

“Gonna attack a man in his own home, huh?” he jeers, righting himself up and bracing for more. He remembers the last time someone hit him that hard - many months ago, in the evidence locker deep in the pit of the DPD.  

The door falls shut behind RK as it walks in, eyes hard with annoyance. It doesn’t look ugly with it, not like _people_ do. Or maybe that’s just the Connor series in a nutshell: angelic, even when ready to turn someone into paste.

“You have no qualms with attacking me in mine,” it says, advancing.

“You ain’t a man, prick.”

He swings and tries to go for its jaw, but RK snatches his wrist faster than he can see and Gavin gets a fist to the guts. He clamps down on the sudden and violent urge to puke, shoving at its chest with his free hand. He teeters back, but the vice grip on his wrist keeps him dangling like a ragdoll.

The whole apartment spins, in a messy wash of colour.

Gavin feels himself getting yanked forward. His arms get wrenched harshly behind his back and he trips over his own ankles like a goddamn toddler. His back collides into the android’s hard chest, and RK leans close to hiss into his ear: “You are...so fucking annoying.”

There’s no gust of human breath, no warm air hitting his skin. Gavin jerks, and RK doesn’t budge at all.

The sound of the curse hits him just right, though, and he shivers. He’s all to aware of the feeling of his own tongue in his head; drooling, excited.    

Gavin turns his head and looks up behind him into RK’s face - then a laugh bubbles up the column of his throat like a chemical eruption.

“Holy goddamn hell,” he cackles, _delighted_. He feels the spittle go flying from his mouth and doesn’t have a single shred of grace left in his body to give a shit. “You’re actually angry aren’t you, you plastic prick?!”

Bona fide fucking anger. Not annoyance, not frustration. RK is _angry_.

It doesn’t matter that the blood from his nose is streaming into the slots between his own teeth, that he’s probably about to get his ass beat six ways to Sunday - the sight of that perfect face pinched in genuine rage is worth every minute of it. Finally, _finally_ there’s something alive behind those pale eyes. _Finally_ , he’s gotten under its artificial skin and touched something _real_.

Maybe it’s madness or maybe he’s just turned on, or some bone-rattling combination of both, but something deep inside himself compels him to dip his head forward before rearing back and headbutting RK in the nose. The android jerks back with a grunt and lets him loose in the process, and Gavin powers through the ache in the back of his skull to spin around and tackle the cocksucker into the ground.

He throws another punch, aiming for the white patch already blooming on its face, but RK catches his fist in a fleshly collision of knuckles on plastic. The impact makes the artificial skin recede on its palm.

“You _fuckin_ -”

RK catches his other fist too, and Gavin’s arms are trembling from the strain of his pushing. Pushing at a brick wall, it feels like. Through the red fog of his burning need to make a goddamn mess he sees some of his own spit and blood flecking onto RK’s marble-perfect face, and he grinds his hips down onto the android’s flat, hard belly.

He’s about to snarl something mindlessly angry when a leg draws up and a shin plants itself against his stomach. RK kicks and Gavin feels himself go flying, the walls of his apartment tilting dangerously, before landing hard on the surface of his coffee table; the magazines and coffee mugs and pasta lid go tumbling and his insides clench so hard from the force that his eyes black out, leaving behind an image like television static.  

“... _fuckin...g…”_

He’s wheezes, lungs aching and ribs creaking. He’s so busy trying to right himself from his sprawl on the table that he doesn’t hear RK rise from the floor.

A powerful hand grasps him by the jaw and he feels himself being thrown on his back onto the couch and thank god, because his couch is soft. There’s a lurching his stomach and he gags. The room is still spinning - RK’s head poking into his field of vision looks like a blurry mess of peach and brown and white. The skin is slowly crawling back over the plastic of its nose.

Gavin gurgles on a curse.

“The two of us,” says RK, voice a quiet murmur cutting through the ringing in his ears. Gavin squeezes his eyes shut. “We can’t keep doing this, Reed.”

It almost sounds like Connor, for a moment. Gentle and infuriating.

His mouth feels like it's filled with sludge: “Why the fuck not.”

He thinks he should be embarrassed by how weak it sounds, but his body hurts too much. It feels like the water in his stomach is trying to slosh its way up his throat.

RK kneels down to his eye level, its face an unreadable collection of a thousand different emotions, beneath the brimming anger. Maybe even its first time feeling some of them: true confusion, fleeting pity, a terrible lack of remorse. Gavin hopes all of those are true, even the pity, because he wants every excuse under the sun to keep going.

To keep clawing at RK until either something happens or Gavin crumbles apart under the strain. Either works as long as he has its attention.  

One of those cool, inhuman hands slides over to cup his jaw, artificial skin pulling back to show off that shiny marble-white. Gavin freezes, eyes dropping down to where its thumb rubs at at his bruised cheekbone. His chest - _everything_ \- pulses. Blood oozes in a fat drop from his nose.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” he breathes, clutching at the cushions. His heart pounds against his bruised ribs.

“I _think_ ,” snaps RK, brows drawing together and lip curling. “I’m giving you what you’ve been wanting so badly since Connor came to the DPD.”

Gavin scowls, “You don’t k-”

“Know what I’m talking about?” interrupts RK and Christ that’s annoying. RK’s fingers slide down to lock around his neck, but there’s no pressure. Yet. It’s holding it like a warning. “I believe I do, Reed. More than you, it seems.”

With the skin turned off, Gavin feels a faint thrumming beneath the plastic casing of its hands. When he swallows, his Adam’s Apple bumps against the space between the thumb and forefinger. He can feel the ridges on those knuckles and joints.

It feels like something that should be warm, but it isn’t. He can feel his own body heat leaching into it, in fact.

 _Can I make you hot all over_ , he wonders, his thoughts a distant and desperate roar. _Can I burn you out from the inside too, you smug piece of shit? I’d like to see you fucking melt._

“Yeah?” he prods, voice rough. “How much do you think you know about me, huh?”

Gavin snatches RK’s free hand and brings it up to his own face, where he wipes his bloody nose into the palm with a wet snort. The one at his neck tightens minutely, and he smiles. Garish, probably. Ugly rather than hot, to anyone with sense.

Androids have more sense than most. They’re supposed to. And the sight of the best of them coiled tight in anger in his crummy apartment makes him feel something approaching _joy_.

The android pulls back a little, yanking its hand from Gavin’s grip. It looks down at red mess on its palm, pale irises scanning and finding who knows what. The rise and fall of Gavin’s chest is heavy as he breathes, nudging against RK’s forearm with each pass. He watches its stony face and feels like he’s standing on the edge of a bridge.

Gavin hooks his fingers into its collar.

RK looks up. Then it rears back its bloody hand and soundly backhands him across the face.

“ _Fuck_!”

He jerks, vision blurring. He’d be falling into the couch if it weren’t for the immovable grip keeping him pinned by the neck.  

It stings. But then, so does everything else.

RK’s jaw works on an irritated grind, and when it speaks it finally sounds nothing like Connor: “I was going to be pleasant to you. I guess that just isn’t your style, is it, Reed?”

Gavin chokes on the tightening hold around his throat, rasps, “Fuck no.”

RK shakes its head, disappointed. _Good_.

Then it pulls him off the couch by the neck to settle itself onto it behind him, deftly maneuvering Gavin’s aching, bruised body to sit between its spread thighs, black flush to front. Its clothes are harsh and uncomfortable against Gavin’s naked back.

“The fuck’re you doin’...” he wheezes. He can still breathe, but the hand is firm and just tight enough to make the breathing _difficult_. He’s clutching weakly at its arm but it won’t budge, and he throbs in his boxers.  

“Experimenting,” it says, voice a rumble next to Gavin’s ringing ears. “Behave yourself, and there may be a next time.”

It reaches down with the free hand to tug off his underwear down to his knees. Gavin’s cock is already lining up snug against the crease of his thigh.

“Figures…” RK tsks. Something about that makes his hips twitch.

“You’re a sick fuck, just like me, huh?” Gavin spits, even though it comes out warbled and gross from all the spit and blood in his mouth. He shimmies his legs a little to get the boxers all the way off and flicks them onto the ground with his foot. RK’s thighs cage him in, long and sturdy, and he spreads his own to rub his legs against them, even if all he gets is the rough seam of its jeans. He glances down to where their feet line up against each other on the carpet, and curls his toes at the sight of its long, sleek shoes. Bigger than his.

The hand around his neck falls off and he only as a second to take in grateful gulps of air before RK’s whole fucking _arm_ locks over his shoulders and throat to keep him still. Keeping him pinned to its front like the world’s most unruly and violent butterfly.

He’s about to complain, insist that he’s not exactly going to go anywhere, when RK’s other hand takes his dick and starts to pump.

Gavin’s protests turn into pleased, stuttering sighs. Blood is streaming from his nose and makes the air bubble nastily when he breathes, but he can’t possibly give a damn. Not right now.

The grip is nowhere near as firm as he likes, and he snipes, “Put some fucking elbow grease into it, _Christ_ …”

The arm around his neck seizes and he’s choking.

“Behave.” Clipped, but lacking the bite of real anger. He can _hear_ how curiosity is overtaking its faculties.

Gavin swears. The arm loosens up and the fist gets tighter, like he wants. Much, much better. He groans and it rattles his chest; RK picks up the pace and Gavin’s mouth drops open, about to praise it, before he remembers himself and snaps it shut.

RK’s movements are stiff and unpractised; it doesn’t use its wrist enough and it doesn’t seem to acknowledge his balls at all, but Gavin’s been boiling for this for weeks now so he doesn’t even care. Just one thing - one more thing and he’s fucking sold on the ride, as is.  

He smacks at its hand and grunts: “Fuckin’ skin - the fuckin’ _skin_ …”

“Use your words, detective.”

 _Asshole_.

“Do the fucking skin thing, dipshit!”

RK hums, and Gavin feels it at his back. Same with its fake heartbeat. He presses back against it, chasing. Grinding his heels into the carpet.

There’s the hissing noise of fake skin receding, and he looks down to see RK’s shiny, white hand like lacquered marble wrapped tight around his ruddy cock. He bucks into the grip, groaning like something out of an overdone porno. The sight of it, the _feel_ of it - God, it’s like nothing else.

His own hands are scrabbling back at RK’s shoulders. Its head - passing through strangely soft hair. Clawing at the arm wrapped around his neck. He knows what he wants, which is to have the android cram the gleaming-white fingers of its free hand right into his drooling maw deep enough for him to choke on it, but he’d die before he ever fucking asked.

He’s throwing his head back and leaking everywhere like a teenager, all from one dry and barely-passable handjob, but damn if it doesn’t feel good to feel full weight of RK’s attention on him. He rocks into the tight circle of its fist, grinds his ass back against its flat groin, and rolls his shoulder blades against its sturdy chest like he’s trying to burrow right inside it. His eyes don’t leave the sight of its hand - he couldn’t look away if he tried. Not even if someone unloaded his own pistol right into his guts right then and there.

“You have a fetish, detective.”

“Yeah?” Gavin settles one of his own hands atop RK’s on his cock, urging it to clench even tighter. It doesn’t, and he slaps at its forearm with his other hand and a snarl of irritation. “And what about you? What’s all this to you then, huh?”

RK slows its pace, strokes turning languid. It hums again behind him, and he can feel it watching its own hand in contemplation. Gavin’s so wound up he could explode.

“Indulging a bit of curiosity. Mitigating my frustrations. Giving you what you want.”

It prods at the tip of Gavin’s cock with its thumb, rolling it in the wet mess Gavin is making: “Take your pick, Reed. I don’t particularly care about your interpretation.”

Gavin grips hard at its thigh where it brackets his own, bitten fingernails digging into denim and unbudging fake muscle. RK gets the hint and takes up a brutal pace, and relief clouds over him so strongly he thinks his eyes may be tearing up.

His head leans back into the crook of the android’s shoulder as he sags, running his mouth with mindless trash that probably doesn’t even make sense. His face feels disgusting, sticky with oil and blood and drool; he can’t see RK’s like this, but he imagines a picture-perfect, stony expression ripe for a magazine cover. Unfazed and stoic like always. All sharp angles and perfect skin and pouty lips.

Gavin’s stomach clenches, and he comes with a curse and a ragged breath.

It all mostly lands on his own stomach; some of it gets on RK’s big, strong knuckles. The android keeps its arm locked around his neck to hold him still as it brings its messy hand up, tilting it back and forth as though watching how his come catches the dim light. Gavin _is_ watching it, like nothing he’s ever watched in his life, drumming the sight of it to memory.

RK bring the hand up close enough to swipe its tongue at. Gavin watches that, too.

It pauses, considering, and then says, “You should quit smoking.”

Gavin hits its arm with the heel of his palm, and RK loosens its hold enough for him to tumble away and sluggishly rearrange himself in a sprawl on the rest of the couch. He reaches down to pick up his discarded boxers and wipes away the mess on his stomach with a rough, tired jerk before throwing them back down onto the carpet.

A special kind of peace settles all along his body, seeping into his skin to relax his nerves. It quiets everything in his head. Gavin relaxes like a cat in a patch of sunbeams.

He watches, blearily, as RK crosses its arms and seems to take the quiet moment as the time to think. Vaguely, he wonders if its having some kind of crisis.

Mostly, he thinks about how he’s going to sleep like the dead tonight. Gavin ought to thank it.

Instead, he sits up a little and decides on having a smoke.

He grabs at the box of cigarettes on the ground, knocked over during the scuffle. He keeps a lighter in the drawer of his coffee table too, for times like these, when he can’t be bothered to get up and find his jacket to fish through the pockets.

“Where do you live again?” Gavin asks, in a distracted mumble. He finds the old thing tucked next to a box of batteries.

“In a Jericho-operated compound.” RK certainly doesn’t _sound_ like it’s having a crisis. It sounds just like it does at the office.

“Well shit,” Gavin lights up. He could offer to let it stay the night, he knows. Maybe badger it for some head in the morning - he’s getting the feeling that it might even be down with that, with how casually it seems to be taking all this in stride.   

He doesn’t.

Instead he chuckles, holds its gaze, and says, “Sucks, _pal_.”

For good measure he blows smoke at its face, though it doesn’t flinch or wrinkle its nose. Instead it only tips its head back and raises a brow.

“You could stand to be clearer with your dismissals and less antagonistic, Reed,” RK says, voice casual, as it stands in one swift move. Its bones don’t creak, its muscles don’t strain. It doesn’t groan or sigh. Gavin thinks RK could be ready to go again at any moment and he resents the way his whole body aches in protest at the idea.

“Could,” he says, looking up the line of its body. He watches the way it fixes its sleeves and straightens its collar, and licks at the inside of his own mouth. Runs his tongue along the bumps of his teeth and bloody gums. “Won’t. Catch you later, prick.”

It strides to the door, long legs a nice sight. RK stops with its hand on the knob, “I trust you’ll behave yourself at work?”

Gavin smiles and gives it a cheeky wave, smoke streaking in the air like fingerpaint: “We’ll see.”

It scowls. Only a little bit. There’s something of a smirk twitching at its mouth too, and the sight of it stays with Gavin long after it leaves and the cigarette becomes a little column of ash between his fingers. He cranes his head to look over at his goldfish, fluttering around a string of fake seaweed.

“Fuckin’ androids, right buddy?”


	4. iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncertainty is a terrible business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, i'm sorry for the delay. had other stuff to write in the interim, and life has been busy. but! we're almost done! bit a transitional chapter, this one, but the finale draws near!

Over the next week, Reed is relaxed. Passing him in the halls gets little more than a glance or a haughty smirk. For once, the man keeps his comments to himself. It’s a strange, almost disconcerting, sight to see him so calm. The dark, tired circles usually found underneath his eyes are gone, too. He walks with less tension, less like he’s at the ready for an altercation.

It’s mystifying.

RK had been aware that sexual activity was healthy for most humans, but seeing its effects demonstrated so plainly is startling.

The sight of the bruising around Reed’s nose brings other feelings, too. Complicated ones. He has yet to speak about the events of that night in Reed’s apartment with Connor, and the thought of interfacing with his predecessor about it is a discomforting one.  

“That’s unusual,” murmurs Connor one afternoon, as the two of them pass Reed and the man does not even glance their way, drinking from his coffee and looking down at his phone. Playing a puzzle game, from what RK can see.

“Yes.” It’s all he can think to say in response, even as his processors flood with all sorts of unbidden thoughts. He feels Connor’s eyes on him, but neither of them say anything as they continue their trek to the bullpen.

He remembers the feeling of Reed’s twitching back flush against his front and having the man completely at his mercy, remembers the barely-tethered violence of his own actions. The way Reed's throat had felt under his hand. It had been strange, and it had been powerful; he hadn’t stopped thinking about it since, and he finds that to be the most aggravating thing of all.

*

Tonight, there is a group of androids being shown around the compound.

RK hears them exploring. Every other week, a new group joins the fold, taking over the spaces left behind by the ones that have found accomodations elsewhere.

There are many compounds around the city. The one RK lives in is a repurposed corporate building, at the outskirts of the city center, given over by the city after Jericho’s bid for property outside of CyberLife-owned warehouses or the tower. Most of the residents have been given old offices to use as temporary living spaces - RK’s clearly used to be a meeting room, boxed by glass walls. Some of the others have taken to covering theirs with cloth or boards, but most androids don’t prioritize privacy. RK didn’t either, not at first.

Since the night in the cab with Reed, he has moved some old bookshelves to cover half of the glass walls to give himself a small space away from anyone’s sight: to think, to learn, to run diagnostics and wonder if he’s malfunctioning. He used to be able to do these things in the open, but lately he’s found the idea of doing so to be uncomfortable. Connor assures him it’s normal, that he’s developing his tastes and his own boundaries. That emotions often bring with them a profound inner turmoil. RK has to question why so many androids sought this out, then. It feels terrible.

RK unpacks his new box of thirium packets and biocomponent cleaning solution onto the shelf, vaguely listening to the sounds outside of his door: android footsteps on carpet, even in rhythm, led around in a tour. He counts 14 new additions to the compound. Last week, 5 had left. Some androids have found homes with humans, many of them their previous owners, and others live with volunteers - sympathetic humans who believe themselves to be contributing to an important cause. RK sometimes finds himself wondering what their true motivations are, and _then_ wonders where his cynicism has come from, all of a sudden. He hasn’t lived enough life to have earned it, he thinks.

The compound is always quiet. Most of the androids prefer conversing via mental communication. On occasion there are human visitors, whose voices ring throughout the entire building.

“D’you want me to visit you?” he hears, from across his floor. A human voice, it sounds like, speaking to an android among the visiting party.

“Ah, I would really like that,” an android replies. “Would you call me?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” says the human. “If you’ve left anything at home, just gimme a text, okay? I’ll bring it over.”

“Thanks, I...thank you.”

There are these cases, too: androids with good homes who want their autonomy, like children leaving the nest.

RK finds himself at a loss when he considers all these variations. His only real human relationship is with Gavin Reed, and even with his limited understanding of social mores he knows that that their relationship would be considered rather unsavoury to most people, human and android alike.

He lines the remaining supplies neatly onto the shelf with the others, before placing the empty box neatly into a corner in the room. He’ll dispose of it tomorrow on the way to work.

There’s a knock on the glass, just before the door opens and Connor walks inside.

“Hello,” greets Connor, looking around the room. It’s his first time in the compound.

RK had expressed that he wanted to meet here, instead of Connor’s apartment. He isn’t sure why, he only knows that lately he has been wanting the comforting atmosphere of his own territory. Connor’s home is not his, it feels too much like opening himself up to scrutiny to be there. Somehow, he finds himself concerned with his predecessor’s opinion. There is no logic to it - only emotions, vague and disorienting.

“Hello,” says RK. “Thank you for coming.”

“I like our talks,” he smiles. Brown eyes are very warm, RK thinks. They must have been the first to go, when CyberLife designed the 900s. “And you’ve never invited me here before.”

He gestures around the room, as though there were anything to look at.

RK shrugs. “Having your own space seems more conducive to private conversations. There are many ears here.”

“Would you prefer to switch to mental communications?”

“I…” No. Something might slip through. He hasn’t interfaced with Connor in recent days for that very reason, and RK is beginning to like having secrets. “Not today.”

The other android nods, face unreadable. Concerned, perhaps, with a tinge of wariness. “Of course, RK.”

Politely, Connor clasps his hands in front of himself, eyes alert and on his face. “What did you want to discuss tonight?”

There is little point in dancing around it, and RK’s patience has been stretched so thin lately. So he asks the question that has been on his mind, as bluntly as he can: “What draws you to the lieutenant?”

Connor blinks, taken aback. “He’s the first human I developed a relationship with.”

The _only_ human, but RK keeps the thought to himself. He gets the feeling that would offend.

“Is that it then?” he asks instead. “Simply because he was the first?”

Surely that can’t be all it takes.

“No,” Connor shakes his head. Then he shifts on his feet, nervous. “Is this about Gavin Reed?”

“Your attempts at a segue are poor and unrefined,” snaps RK. “I asked you about your relationship with lieutenant Anderson.”

Connor’s mouth pinches.

They stare each other down for approximately 10 seconds before the other android sighs. “I don’t know what draws me to Hank.”

RK watches his face, the way he can’t seem to settle on one emotion.

“I’ve thought about it many times,” continues Connor. “I’ve yet to quantify the reasons why.”

He gives RK a pitying look, and says, “I imagine that must be an unsatisfactory answer.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

RK leans back against the bookshelf, arms crossed. He can feel himself scowling. He decides on a different line of questioning, because the softness of Connor’s eyes when he speaks of the lieutenant prickles at his processors in a way that he doesn’t like: “Would you be a machine again, if you could?”

Connor comes close, and leans against the glass of the wall. The hallway lights make him look angelic, and RK spares a moment to wonder if he looks the same way.

“Could you specify?” asks Connor.

“To be rid of uncertainty,” says RK. He doesn’t mean for it to come out so tired.

“Oh.” Connor shakes his head, frowning. “No.”

“You say that so confidently,” murmurs RK.

“I remember what it was like,” Connor pulls his coin from his jacket pocket. It dances across his fingers, stealing light from the hall and bouncing it back into the dark of RK’s room. “I remember how empty it was, and how...mindless.”

Connor pauses, flicking the coin in RK’s direction, who catches it without a thought. RK looks down at the way it sits in the center of his palm. If he wanted, he could do the same tricks - with even more skill, perhaps. More dexterity and finesse. But he feels no urge. His restlessness remains confined in his head.

Connor sighs. “Uncertainty is terrifying, I understand. It hasn’t been easy for me either.”

Somehow, RK hadn’t considered that. He wants to admonish himself for being so self-focused.  

“Maybe you would have been more suited to staying a machine,” says Connor. “I can’t say. I can only speak for myself. All I _can_ say is that I like that part of it very much.”

“Which part?”

“Speaking for myself,” the other android shrugs, looking down at his feet. “There is a ‘me’ now, when before there was only ever the mission.”

He pauses, as though a thought has come to him. Connor straightens, hands in his pockets and gazing at RK with a sudden clarity on his face: “I suppose that’s my answer to your first question, about Hank.”

RK raises a brow.

“Hank saw 'me',” says Connor, voice firm. His LED glows a clear, unconflicted blue. “Before I ever did.”

RK doesn’t know what to say to that. He thinks of Reed, and isn’t sure that the man sees anything in RK beyond being a means to a messy and violent end. And RK isn’t sure he wants to be more than that, to someone like Reed.

Connor takes in RK’s silence, and asks, “How is that for an answer?”

“It’s…” RK looks away from him, focuses on a dark corner of the room. “Satisfactory.”  

“Hm,” Connor is smiling; RK can’t see it, but he knows it’s there. “I suppose that will have to do.”

The conversation turns into a much less fraught one about work, about their respective cases. There has been very little development on the Jason Roderick case, and RK finds the lack of progression frustrating. Connor, meanwhile, has been swamped with android-related hate crimes; he and Anderson have been staying late at the precinct on many nights to get through them.

They don’t talk about Reed.

*

When Connor leaves, RK’s HUD flashes with an alert notifying him of an incoming message. An SMS, sent from a phone; it’s an unusual enough occurrence that he accepts without thinking.

“Hey.”

Reed.  

 _How did you acquire my contact number_? He sends back, LED circling yellow. RK walks toward the bookcase, his one shield against prying eyes, and sits down on the ground against it.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for Reed to find his number in the employee database, or to get it from someone in human resources. But somehow, RK feels the need to make Reed know his communications are only conditionally welcome. It’s a strange sort of defensiveness, and he’s not sure where it came from.

“Grabbed it from the front desk. What, you mad tin man?”

Annoyed would be more accurate. He hasn’t felt a genuine spark of rage since the night at Reed’s apartment. It had spiraled so far beyond his control, had taken hold of his body in a way he hadn’t anticipated. He'd been too ill-equipped to handle it  _properly_. He’s analyzed his memories of it top to bottom, considered every angle, examined it under his razor-sharp inspection module, and still finds himself at a loss. He thinks he should never want to find himself feeling that way again, but there had been something freeing about it, too. A release - from thinking, from calculating. It seems akin to what Connor described, and yet nothing like it at all.

The nebulous grey zone of living, he’d heard someone call it - his neighbor, an AX400, who has long since moved out. She’d been a poetic one, lofty and high-minded.

_I can’t imagine you have anything urgent to say to me that can’t be discussed at work._

“Fuck work. Come over.”

_Why?_

“Could use some head tonight.”

_You are aware that this is an inappropriate conversation to be having a with a coworker, aren’t you?_

It’s a tempting thought, to bring a transcript to the precinct and having Reed terminated from his position on the basis of harassment. But -

“As if you didn’t fucking show up at my place last week all ready for a fight.”

There is that.

 _You have a point_ , he sends. _But_ _how does that translate into an on-going arrangement?_

“What, getting all weird about it now?”

 _I was never ‘weird’ about it_.

“You don’t get to get your hands all over me and then freak out about it later, pal.”

 _You’re greatly overestimating your ability ‘freak me out’_.

“I think I get to you more than you wanna admit.”

*

Reed’s door has a chip next to the doorknob.

RK gets about 10 seconds to stare at it, working out the source of the impact as being from human fingernails, before the door swings open and he’s presented with the sight of the man himself, cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth. He’s wearing only his jeans, which hang very low on his hips, bearing the bright white band of his underwear. It draws the eye to the trail of hair leading from his navel to his groin - a very curated look, and RK doesn’t know why Reed even bothered when RK had already agreed to come.  

The dark circles are back under the dips of Reed’s eyes.

Not waiting for a verbal invitation, RK strides forward and into the apartment with purpose. Reed steps aside to give him space, almost instinctively, holding the door open and keeping his eyes on RK’s face as though he’s waiting for a cue.

Woefully, RK considers how Reed doesn’t afford him nearly this much respect at the office.

When the door clicks shut, he turns to face the man fully.

Reed says nothing but his eyes become hazy, and his mouth quirks up into a pleased, lazy little smile. Like he’s won something, and maybe he has. RK is here, after all, despite his better judgement.

A peculiar sort of calm settles over RK at the sight of that smile, the sharp edges of his teeth - a peaceful and uncomplicated state of mind. With little thought he reaches over to settle a grip around Reed’s neck, watches the satisfaction suffuse his face, and gives himself to wonder.  


	5. v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever it is - it works, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, thank you so much for keeping up with this - and thank you to those who took the time to comment!! i probably would've lost interest in continuing, if not for you guys!!
> 
> additional warnings: some choking, thoughts of a violent nature.

Proceedings at the Detroit Police Department have never been smoother, RK finds himself thinking. At least, not in his entire time here.

It has been weeks, and RK finds himself lamenting that it could have _always_ been like this.

Reed isn’t friendly, and he never will be - but he’s _cooperative_. They still haven’t found any leads on the Jason Roderick case, but if Reed continues to rein in his aggression then the lack of progress is sure to be less aggravating than before.

RK finds himself fielding a few curious looks thrown his way from the other officers whenever the man acquiesces to RK’s advice without a fuss. He pretends to be clueless when Ben Collins nudges him one afternoon to ask why Reed suddenly “put the teeth away”, he looks away when Tina Chen casts a suspicious glance at him as Reed politely moves around him instead of going for his usual body check. He claims he’s noticed nothing whatsoever, when Captain Fowler pats him on the shoulder and says “whatever you’re doing, keep doing it”.

Connor is the only one he can’t fool. The other android catches him watching Reed from across the office, eyes roving over the man’s easy, relaxed posture with interest simmering on the surface of his skin.

RK has been doing that a lot, lately. Watching. Analyzing. Seeing the effects of his handiwork in the way Reed moves, the more bearable way he speaks. The positive feedback to his processors makes him thrum with restless, curious energy.

There aren’t always marks - that would be too much, and liable to get them both in trouble. Even RK knows that much. Sometimes he leaves them in places that can’t be seen: the man’s inner thighs, his back, his chest. He’s developed preferences, however, for the vulnerable places.

So many spots on the human body designed to fail them, to send the whole structure tumbling down. The neck and spine. Tendons at the ankles. The veins in the wrists.

The fragile artery in their tongues - it’s a wonder the species hasn’t died out, considering the graceless work of their mouths. There’s nothing in his own but microplates for sensors; he could clip the whole thing out of his own head, if he wanted to. He’s placed it in the blinding heat of Reed’s mouth, touched the man’s teeth and absorbed the texture of his gums. Exploration had yielded the properties and density of human saliva, the number of cavities new and old, the burgeoning side effects of smoking.

Even with his sensors turned on, RK doesn’t understand the appeal of kissing very much. The sensations are interesting but only barely-pleasant. He does, however, find endless fascination in the way that Reed’s body turns boneless when he does it.

Connor thinks about kissing often, from what he can glean from their data exchanges. The other person in his fantasies is always Hank Anderson, and Connor’s imagination is more vivid than RK is entirely comfortable with.

As time moves on, they are beginning to have less and less in common.

 _“I think that’s a good thing, it means we’re becoming individuals,”_ Connor had said when RK had brought it up.

They have interfaced since the conversation in RK’s room, and RK finds himself spending more and more time reassuring his predecessor that he is certain of his own choices. It may have been a mistake; he probably should have kept his thoughts to himself, after all. He hadn’t known Connor had a disposition for worrying about anyone other than Anderson.   

RK had crossed his arms, and his voice had turned probing: _“Yet, you find it discomforting that I am straying so strongly from the patterns established by you.”_

 _“Hm,”_ Connor’s mindfulness of his speech always grated, in those moments - the ones where RK wanted nothing but hard truth. _“I’ll admit, I find this sexual relationship between you and Reed...concerning, RK.”_

 _“You say this as though Lieutenant Anderson is healthier choice in human companion,”_ Reed is not his companion, but Anderson is Connor’s. Or would be, if the man chose to acknowledge the undercurrent of tension between them. _“Anderson isn’t mindlessly aggressive - but he lives with a host of psychological issues, too.”_

Connor had looked defensive. _“Hank is kind, RK. He believes in the best of me.”_

_“He threatened you with a gun.”_

The other android’s mouth had clicked shut at that, his face closing off. _“I know.”_

Did he really?

But then, RK isn’t sure he is in a place to cast judgements. After all, he’s chosen to spend his nights viciously beating and engaging sexually with a man who uses him as an outlet for his complexes. He has yet to find an appropriate label for what he and Reed have between them; he’s not sure one exists.   

*

Whatever storm of uncertainty RK faces in his day life, he finds calm here, in the dark of Reed’s bedroom.

“You just doing that for my benefit?” Reed rasps, eyeing the skin receding back from RK’s fingers and pumping his own cock.

He always watches that part like a hawk.  

“There’s very little I would do for your benefit,” RK says. The way it comes out of his mouth, it feels like lying; he is just not sure who he is lying to. “I can feel sensation better this way, don’t read into it.”

That part is true: he likes the feel of Reed’s skin, and the heat of him. The way he becomes so much easier, and even enjoyable, to manage. The sounds he makes, too - RK enjoys those. Sometimes it sounds as though the man doesn’t even want to make them, that he’s annoyed when RK coaxes them out. And that is even better.  

Reed barks a laugh before rearing up on his elbows to lick a stripe up RK’s cheek, getting a scowl in return. His breath is sour from cigarettes and alcohol. “Whatever you need to convince yourself, big man.”

The bare white of his hand collides with Reed’s cheek in a hard slap. It makes the man shudder even as his head snaps to the side, biting at his own mouth like an animal. RK sees the peek of his teeth, his tongue, the way his jaw goes loose as he pants.

RK knows how hot it is in there. He slips his fingers past the puffy lips, not quite close enough to trigger the gag reflex, and strokes at the squirming tongue inside. Reed’s saliva pools in the ridges of his his fingers, slick and vulgar.

His other hand knocks away Reed’s and circles around his cock, grip hard. He’s gotten better at this by now, judging by the way Reed groans.

Reed is rutting right into his fist, and RK watches the movement with interest. So hurried and desperate. He wonders what that must be like: was it really so worth it to lose all mental faculties in pursuit of this?

“God,” groans Reed, pulling off from his fingers and throwing his head back onto his pillow. His throat is bobbing. “ _God_ , I wish you had a fucking dick, _why don’t you have a fucking dick_ -”

Humans do this often, asking questions they’re not seeking answers to. Sometimes Connor does it too - RK has yet to form this particular habit. RK takes his hand off his erection and kneads the heel of his palm low on Reed’s stomach, watching the way the flesh jumps at his touch. He imagines trying to penetrate him, but finds it difficult.

“You could remedy your desperate need for one by purchasing a toy,” RK says, in those clinical tones that he knows gets on the man’s nerves. “Or paying for the services of -”

Reed snarls, and RK feels a faint smile on his own face as Reed snatches his collar to yank him down. Reed bites at the edge of his jaw, hard enough for the skin to retract and for sensation indicators to flash warnings in his vision. If his sensors had been on, that would have hurt.

Curling his fingers into unruly brown hair, he pulls harshly to pry him off. Reed yelps, hips bucking.  

“It’s not the same and you _know_ it you stupid, plastic fuck,” he barks, reaching up to claw at RK’s arms and shoulders.

“I _don’t_ know it,” RK says, placid. “I don’t _care_.”

Shoving his arms away, RK flips Reed over onto his front. The mattress bounces, springs creaking as Reed lands heavily on his stomach and elbows. He hauls those squirming hips up, spreads the cheeks of Reed’s ass, and pings his internal hardware to produce more saliva as he trails his tongue around the little hole.

“Oh fuck _you_ ,” whines Reed, his low voice pitching high in distress. He’s slamming his fist down onto his pillow, likely in lieu of being able to reach RK’s head.

“You can’t.” He murmurs it in between his work, and briefly wonders if that is considered bad manners.

As with stimulating him manually, he quickly learns that Reed prefers faster, harder movement. So he uses the whole of his tongue, laps at him as though trying to devour him whole. It doesn’t take much before Reed is rocking back onto his face, cursing nonsense into his pillow and making a damp patch on his sheets.

He pulls away when Reed starts showing signs of being near orgasm, and the sudden stop earns him a few more choice words. He feels a sharp, backward kick at his thigh. RK reaches down and gives the man’s testicles a firm, painful squeeze.

Reed yells and starts trying to crawl away, but RK latches onto his ankle and hauls him back, pulling his hips to line up against his own.

“Asshole,” Reed grunts into his pillow, even as his cock makes a mess on the sheets. “You’ve got fucking _nothing_.”

“Yes,” RK smiles, though Reed can’t see it. “And that bothers you.”

Reed shudders.

“Tell me something,” he starts as he moves Reed’s hips to rock against his, more than strong enough to handle him any which way he wants. “Is oral stimulation not enough? Why are you so desperate for this particular act?”

The pale imitation of actual penetration clearly frustrates Reed, who bucks back and snarls. His hands fist themselves in his pillow, tendons and veins bulging in his forearms. The entire line of his back is one broad, shaking mess gleaming with sweat, and RK admires the dips in his spine and the slopes of his muscles. The scars, too, and the faint smattering of freckles at the backs of his shoulders. He’s in excellent shape.

He could be attractive, if not for his foul personality.

“Because it’s _fucking_ ,” Reed snap. “It’s not that deep.”

“Why do you want to be fucked?”

“Are you serious -”

RK clamps a hand down on the back of Reed’s sweaty neck, pinning his head into the bed and digging his fingers painfully into the tender spots behind his ears. Reed tries to jerk back, testing the strength of RK’s hold; he clearly finds it more than adequate, because he moans, muffled by the pillow.

“Why do you want to be fucked, detective?”

He punctuates his question with a pointed grind of his flat groin against Reed’s ass.

“ _Jesus_ ...because it feels good,” Reed manages to turn his head on the pillow enough to speak. There’s a patch of drool under the pit of his mouth. “‘Cause I _like_ it, motherfucker. Not rocket science!”

“Why do you want _me_ to fuck you?”

Reed’s nostrils flare and he says nothing, screwing his eyes shut and grinding back against RK’s hips in pathetic, desperate little jerks. That wouldn’t do. With the grip on his neck, RK wrenches him up against his front. Reed yelps, arms coming up on instinct to scrabble at RK’s hand.

“Argh!”

RK’s locks his arm around the front of his throat, squeezing. Reed’s whole body flinches against him as he tries to breathe.

He watches intently at the man’s face, observing the way it changes colour. He’s seen this many times by now, but he always keeps an eye on the process anyway, just in case there is something new. He waits just long enough, until the thrashing starts to turn desperate, before loosening his arm and letting go.

Reed coughs, hard. Almost hard enough to vomit, it sounds like. Before he can collapse onto the bed, RK holds him tight to against his chest. He asks again: “Why do you want me to fuck you?”

Through a ruined voice and tearful eyes, Reed rasps, “Y-You’d...make it good...”

“Good?”

“...Fucking _perfect_ …”

That is enough, he thinks. He can work with that much, for now. He rewards the man’s honesty with hard strokes on his cock, and fingers plunging inside him. It doesn’t take much, after that.

Orgasm saps all the strain from Reed’s body, makes him softer around the edges. He falls back onto the bed, hard, making the mattress jump.

Picking up Reed’s discarded t-shirt from the floor, RK wipes his hands. Then he adjusts the crooked sleeves of his shirt and lapels, before smoothing down the front of his slacks.

“God…” Reed shivers on the bed. His voice is a wreck. It will be that way for days.

“I’m learning all sorts of new things about you, detective,” RK murmurs. “And these base desires of yours. I figured you to be more complicated than that.”

“I don’t need to you psychoanalyze me, creep.” Reed snaps. Or tries to - he’s still trying to catch his breath. He should really quit smoking.

“What _do_ you need from me, then?” RK asks. They haven’t actually spoken about it, what the nature of their relationship - or arrangement - _is_.   

Reed snorts. The sound is wet in his nose. “Thought you were supposed to be Mr. Fucking Supercomputer.”

He gingerly sits upright, reaching over into his nightstand to pull out a pack of cigarettes: “All I want out of you is a good fight, or a better fuck. That’s it. There isn’t much of a use for you outside of that.”

He’s known that was the case, and yet it still sends sparks of irritation across his insides to hear it. RK looks at the knuckles on Reed’s weathered hand, and imagines taking a hammer to them just to watch them separate. Looking back up into his face, he says, “I see.”

He will be rougher, next time. Reed has earned that.

All of that is fine with him, so long as Reed’s behaviour is controlled when they are at work. That is worth all of this, he thinks -

\- or tells himself. Sometimes, it’s unclear.

*

He walks out of the bedroom, picking his jacket off from where it rests on one of Reed’s kitchen chairs, though he doesn’t bother to put it back on and slings it over his arm instead. He glances over to the shelf that houses the goldfish, where the little animal is still working away at the thin sheet of food flakes clinging to the surface of the water.

Fascinated, RK comes close. He watches the movements of its puckered mouth, the flapping of its tiny fins, and wonders how someone like Reed has managed to keep the little creature alive.

He’s distracted for so long that Reed eventually comes out of the bedroom, blinking in surprise to see him there. Half of the cigarette remains, poking out the side of his mouth.

“Shit, you're still here?”

Somehow.

“I was examining your fish.”

Reed grunts, brows pinched in mild, derisive confusion. He doesn’t ask for an elaboration, instead moves around RK to head into the kitchen, where he fetches himself a glass from the cupboard and fills it with water from the sink.

RK takes the sight of him in: Reed is a fit man, for all that he smokes and eats terribly, and sleeps even worse. At the moment he moves fluidly, free of tension. He looks peaceful. Maybe even attractive, when he doesn’t speak.

“Hey,” says Reed, setting the cup down onto the counter. “You should get a dick.”

RK’s moment of admiration dissipates as fast as it came. He’s not sure what came over him, because in reality the dying bulbs in his kitchen lights paints Reed in yellow hues, like a sickness. It emphasizes the dark circles under his eyes, the mottled colour of his skin. It takes the shadows of his eye sockets and turns them into ghastly black holes. RK eyes his uneven shave, and the jagged scar on his bent nose. RK had nearly broken that nose, that first night in this very apartment.

“What benefit could I possibly get from such a thing?” RK asks.

RK has no interest in sexual gratification, he doesn’t think, and especially not from someone like this. He thinks of Connor and his desires, his longing for the lieutenant’s attention, his want to touch and be touched by him - and could frown from the weight of his distaste for it.

Reed leans his head back against the cupboards. It bares his throat, and the rounded bump of his Adam’s Apple. There are the beginnings of new bruising, vaguely in the shape of RK’s fingers. Reed rolls his eyes over to look up at RK through his lashes, and it makes his whole head move, bringing into sharp relief the stubbled edge of his jaw.

“You could choke me on it,” says Reed, grinning a little bit. His pupils are blown, nearly swallowing up the blue of irises. Hungry, all the time and everywhere. “I think you’d dig that a lot.”

“Hm.”

It’s a thought.

Reed scratches fingers through the light dusting of hair on his chest, around the firm swell of his pectorals. There’s a scar right near the edge of his armpit - RK had asked about it, once, but Reed had only scoffed and asked why it was even his business. RK could’ve scanned it, gathered enough data to hypothesize as to its circumstances, but he hadn’t cared. Still doesn’t, so he turns his eyes away, looking back at the man’s strangely healthy goldfish.  

“I got your number, prick,” murmurs Reed. There’s no bite to his voice, only a purring satisfaction. “Bet you’ll get one.”

RK looks back at him. He won’t admit it out loud, but Reed is correct. Reed is correct in a lot of things, often accidentally.  

 _You’ll die one day_ , he thinks suddenly, gazing upon Reed’s ruined face, and the smoke streaming from the orange tip of the cigarette. _I wonder what I’ll have learned from you by then._

There will, at some point, be a limit. An end to what Reed will have to teach him, and to his own patience. He wonders what will happen then, if RK will find some excuse to kill the man quietly and make it look like an accident, once they become bored of one another, or once Reed is no longer able to rein in his monstrous personality and the disharmony in his nature.

He thinks of Connor and his Lieutenant Anderson. Connor would never think such things about Hank - _hasn’t_ , from what he’s seen during interfacing. He wonders when he’s strayed so far from Connor’s better example.

He’s finding himself less bothered by it as time goes on. Perhaps Connor would be proud. Perhaps not.

RK hums, as neutrally as he can make it. “We’ll see. Good night, detective.”

He shuts the door quietly behind him as he leaves, feeling the victorious burn of Reed’s eyes at his back.


End file.
